Main menu

Christmas Present: Honey & the Bees’ “Jing Jing a Ling”

In the introductory post, I mentioned that classics should lightly be sprinkled in. Of course, they don’t all have to be the obvious choices either, as today’s selection shows.

Honey & the Bees were a Philadelphia-based group that recorded on the famous Chess label in the ’60s and early ’70s. They never made a huge mark, but their talent was obvious, as “Jing Jing a Ling” shows. It’s a simpler song, but it works, and the beauty of the music and the vocals secure a spot on the playlist.

I heard this play in a store years ago, and it took quite some time to track it down; the song has popped up on a few collections but it took some work to get ahold of it. Sometimes I think the effort of tracking down a song that’s lodged in your head causes it to stick with you longer.

Additional listening

Obviously much more known and from roughly the same era, Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” is such a beautiful song, and has become a tradition in its own right thanks to David Letterman having her on the show annually over the past 25 years. I got to see her perform live as part of the “Hairspray” cast a few years ago, and it remains a cherished memory. Letterman’s team put out a video that edited together her performances over the years, which is pretty awesome in its own right: